Category: default || By jt3y

Yes, Google may be a soul-crushing entity that's destroying newspapers, but I love it. I'd gladly pay for my monthly Google use much like I pay for my telephone --- in fact, I use it more than the telephone --- and I'm astonished that it's free.

One of Google's many features is "blog alert," which allows you to scan blog postings for certain keywords; Google then mails you links to blog entries in which your keywords appear.

Naturally, one of my Google alerts is for Our Fair City, and that blog alert has turned up all sorts of interesting things over the last few months:

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Mom's Diaries: This purports to be diary entries from a Mon Valley woman who was born in 1929 and died in 2004. It's either actually the diary entries of this woman or it's a fantastic conceptual art project, or maybe it's both.

If you're looking for salacious details, don't bother. Instead you get entries like this one for the first Tuesday of June, 1978:

School. Called Carol. Dave came. Had lunch. Waited for his car. Worked on garden. Carolyn brought sprayer. Trimmed hedges. Harry had game. Had early supper. Went to stores. Kroger, Gold Circle, Murphy Mart & Giant Eagle.

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The Well Ministries: This McKeesport-based ministry, which includes the contemporary gospel group "Chalice," has a blog, where I learned that apparently some neb-nose has been calling the cops because the band's bus was parked along Versailles Avenue (you may have seen it next to Castle Printing).

"Isn’t there something else for people to complain about?" asks Kris Rhodes of Chalice, and being very familiar with the neighborhood, I tend to agree. Maybe some of these busy-bodies could cut the grass in some of the vacant lots. There's a happy ending; according to a subsequent post, Mayor Jim Brewster has confirmed that the bus was fine where it was.

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Casey's Old Country Corner: Reports on local rasslin', including the very-active semi-pro and pro circuit around McKeesport.

(From the McKeesport Symphony to wrestling matches to gospel music, you can't say we don't have something for everyone.)

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National UFO Reporting Center: A McKeesport resident reports seeing "a bright light in the sky" on Nov. 28, 2004, at 11:50:57 a.m. I don't know why it just showed up on my Google blogs alert, but it may be a government cover-up.

As for the "bright light in the sky," I have confirmed that other Mon-Yough area residents were frightened by this object, some of whom have never seen it before. It was called "the sun."

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Life in Routineville: An Alert Reader of the Almanac who no longer lives in the area, but who has family here and keeps up with events. Sadly, he hasn't reported any UFOs lately, nor on any rasslin' matches, but read it anyway.

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Basically Decent: Anythem, another Alert Reader of the Almanac, hasn't reported any UFOs either, but she's reported lots of other things at her blog, written from a secret, undisclosed location in the Steel Valley.

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Effect Measure: This blog about public health on Memorial Day carried the story of the death of a McKeesport steelworker from the turn-of-the-century who was immortalized in the song "He Lies in the American Land."

The song, by Andrew Kovaly of McKeesport, was covered by Pete Seeger and inspired a song by Bruce Springsteen.

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Club Favorite: I'm not sure who Luna Beth O'Shea is, but she seems to be from the Mon-Yough area and is heavily into 1970s and '80s nostalgia, which should put her Flickr photos right up your alley.

She's also into posing outdoors with a minimum of clothing, so the link is marginally not-safe-for-work; you have been warned. (And I know you're all going to click it anyway.)

I'll tell you this much: After seeing Luna, you'll never think of the slag pile in Duquesne or Kentucky Fried Chicken in quite the same way. (Keep your "Finger Lickin' Good" jokes to yourself, please.)

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Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association: There was a nice discussion here of the life of former U.S. Marshal Stan Holland, a firearms instructor at the McKeesport Sportsman's Association and elsewhere. Holland died of a heart attack recently at age 60. (The Post-Gazette had an obituary on May 22.)

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Serendipity: This local blog, written by "Merge Divide," checked in May 11 on the controversy over the prayers that open meetings of McKeesport city council. The Almanac spouted off on the same topic, but Merge Divide gives the opposing viewpoint, which I respect and understand:

To me this is simply a matter of common sense and pragmatics. I have yet to hear a compelling reason why prayer should be included in governmental meetings. What purpose could it possibly serve? The moral authority of any particular governmental body rests in the respective Constitution(s) of the locality in which it resides. That should be enough legitimacy. Why add an extra layer of assumed authority that by its very nature is deeply personal?

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Metroblogging Pittsburgh: Meanwhile, a med student assigned to UPMC McKeesport says the Almanac is all wet when it questions the value of the Mon-Fayette Expressway (aka the "Mo-Fo Excessway," with a tip of the Tube City hard hat to the Angry Drunk Bureaucrat):

The roads to the Mon Valley communities are two-lane, heavy with traffic lights, and not fast-moving. I now understand why the community leaders here think they need a highway ...

The fine young progressives of Pittsburgh, including Bill Peduto, have been loudly against the Mon-Fay as promoting sprawl and the hollowing out of our urban core (it'd help form a beltway around the city).

I'm no particular fan of highways or sprawl. Still, when I look West towards the airport, I see thriving businesses that feed off the airport, Robinson Town Centre, and the combination of the Parkway and the 28X.

When I look southeast, I see lots of available cheap land, already built up with streets and sewerage, and Kennywood as a built-in draw. It makes me wonder whether a bit of sprawl might be a fair price to pay for bringing some of our almost-dead towns back to life.

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Ancestry.com: One of the genealogy blogs at Ancestry.com coughed up a 1902 history of the McKeesport police department. You have to register for Ancestry.com to read it, unfortunately, and that should keep you busy for a while.

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Anyway, that's Google's roundup of blogs that have recently mentioned McKeesport, Allegheny County's second-most livable city, as voted by the Tube City Places Rated Almanac. To quote Tom Lehrer, "there may be many others but they haven't been discovered," so feel free to add 'em in the comments or email me.